If you're considering a live Christmas tree this year, stop for a moment. From a tree's point of view, the whole process of coming indoors is sheer torture. A live tree has to suffer the stresses of decoration duty and drought--in the form of dry, indoor air. Yet the fact that some of them manage to live through it is only proof that some trees are very tough. Thus, the best live Christmas tree is the one that is happily growing outdoors, where it belongs.

Master storyteller, Charles Kuralt, wrote about a special outdoor tree that came more alive during the holidays...

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Then again, you can keep reading...
 
"Trees just don’t grow up here on the high plateaus of the Colorado Rockies--everybody knows that. Trees need good soil and good weather and up here there's no soil and terrible weather. That's why the tree is a kind of miracle.

"The tree is a juniper, and it grows beside U.S. 50 all alone, not another tree for miles. Nobody remembers who put the first Christmas ornament on it, but from that day to this, the tree has been redecorated each year. Nobody knows who does it. But each year, by Christmas day, the tree has become a Christmas tree.

"The tree has survived against all the odds. The summer droughts haven't killed it, or the winter storms. When the highway crew came out to widen the road they could have taken the tree with one pass of their bulldozer. But some impulse led them to start widening the road just a few feet past the tree.

"The tree violates the laws of man and nature. Local people all know about, and love the tree. They have Christmas trees of their own, of course, the kind that are brought to town in trucks and sold in vacant lots and put up in living rooms. This one tree belongs to nobody and to everybody.

"Just looking at it makes you think about how unexpected life on earth can be. The tree is so lonely and so brave that it seems to offer courage to those who pass it--and a message. It is the Christmas message: that there is life and hope even in a rough world."

Wishing you a joyous holiday season filled with love,

Marion